Environment of Brazil

This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (June 2019)

The environment of Brazil is characterized by high biodiversity with a population density that decreases away from the coast.

Brazil's large area comprises different ecosystems, which together sustain some of the world's greatest biodiversity. Because of the country's intense economic and demographic growth, Brazil's ability to protect its environmental habitats has increasingly come under threat.

Extensive legal and Illegal logging destroys forests the size of a small country per year, and with it a diverse series of species through habitat destruction and habitat fragmentation.^[1] Between 2002 and 2006, an area of the Amazon Rainforest equivalent in size to the State of South Carolina was completely deforested for the purposes of raising cattle and woodlogging.^[2] In April 2012 Brazil's powerful farm lobby won a long-sought victory after the National Congress of Brazil approved a controversial forestry bill that environmentalists say will speed deforestation in the Amazon as more land is opened for producing food.^[3] By 2020, at least 50% of the species resident in Brazil may become extinct.^[2]

There is a general consensus that Brazil has the highest number of both terrestrial vertebrates and invertebrates of any single country in the world.^[4] Also, Brazil has the highest primate diversity,^[4] the highest number of mammals,^[4] the highest number of amphibians, the second highest number of butterflies,^[4] the third highest number of birds,^[4] and second highest number of reptiles.^[4] There is a high number of endangered species,^[5] many of them living in threatened habitats such as the Atlantic Forest.